You can't go home again, MS edition

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2011/08/07 07:01 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2011/08/07/10193388.aspx

It was Thomas Wolfe who first wrote (via fictional author George Webber) that You can't go home again.

I don't think I really ever believed that before.

Of course I wasn't going home, but that was largely by choice - I have largely moved on, at this point.

Also, moving from cane to scooter combined with being way too busy at work kept me from my 20th reunion. People could see it all on Facebook anyway, I figured.

But for my grandmother's 95th birthday? I figured I could make an exception....

Fate, it would seem, would have other plans.

Mostly stuck in the iBot now,

I thought about the house as I remembered it and figured everything would be okay.

But after not being in that house for nearly 2½ decades, it seemed like I had forgotten some of the salient details....

Like the fact that one of the steps in front of the house is too steep for 4-wheel mode.

Or none of the steps have railing near them to allow the stair climbing mode.

And I don't trust the stairs down to the recently refinished basement.

Plus the carpeted stairs up to the second floor, I didn't want to necessarily want to trust to the ~440 pound weight that is me.

Perhaps most devastatingly, the thin bathroom door on the first floor, partially obstructed by a bookshelf, was impassable to the iBot.

The net effect?

With extreme measures involving plywood ramps that make the front door largely impassable to otherw, I could just barely get into the house that I grew up in.

Provided I left before I had to go to the bathroom....

Obviously if I went back, things would likely be better. Though the burned child fears the fire, so there will likely be competing forces dealing with this.

Because when you have MS, sometimes Thomas Wolfe had a point. And you really can't go home again....

Not if you need to use the bathroom, at least....

Kemp on 7 Aug 2011 8:18 AM:

You know, reading the title of this post was the first time I realised that your condition and your employer have the same acronym. I was expecting a post about Microsoft pulling an EA and not allowing anyone to leave until a new app shipped ;-)

Joshua on 8 Aug 2011 8:14 AM:

:(

jmdesp on 13 Aug 2011 8:30 AM:

No going back home is also a song's theme, I don't know if you know Francoise Hardy's take on that in "La maison où j'ai grandi" www.youtube.com/watch

(the song is originally Italian, and was also covered by Verdelle Smith as Tar and Cement)